Visit Our Sponsor:
30-cent Hamilton
Color is the best way to distinguish National Bank Note Company’s 30-cent Hamilton from that of Continental Bank Note. NBNCo’s ink is a very full, rich black; CBNCo’s ink is a much duller, off-gray black. Again similar to several of the preceding stamps in the 1873 Continental Issue, the 30-cent Hamilton is more easily discerned from the NBNCo printing by a direct comparison of the two stamps. Though the 30-cent stamp could have been used to pay ten times the first-class domestic rate, it typically paid expensive foreign-destination letter rates to Peru, Mexico, and India. Continental Bank Note Company printed approximately 2,050,000 stamps of the 30-cent Hamilton issue.
